MOSCOW, March 30. /TASS/. Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case over desecration of the burial sites of victims of fascism and over rehabilitation of Nazism in Ukraine, the commitee's spokesman Vladimir Markin told TASS on Monday.

According to the spokesman, investigators have concrete evidence of destruction and desecration by unidentified persons of monuments dedicated to Soviet fighters against fascism in the territory of Ukraine in 2014.

Thus, on January 6, 2014 a monument to 32 soldiers liberators who perished during the Great Patriotic War [of the USSR against Nazi Germany of 1941-1945] was destroyed in the Glinyany city of the Zolochevsky district of the Lviv region; on February 10, the monument to the perished sailors and ships of the Black Sea Shipping Company was damaged in Odessa; on February 22, a monument to the Soviet soldier liberator was destroyed in the Stary city of the Lviv region.

On March 18 and May 5, a Holocaust memorial was desecrated in the city of Novomoskovsk in the Dnipropetrovsk region. On April 9, a monument to soldiers who died during World War II was destroyed in the Sukhoi Liman city of the Odessa region. On September 24, the "Menorah" memorial dedicated to the Jews who perished in World War II was desecrated in Kiev’s Babi Yar district, and on October 7, a memorial plaque to Hero of the Soviet Union Pyotr Vasilevsky was broken in Kharkiv.

"These monuments are symbols of military glory of the Soviet soldiers in the fight against fascism, and as the Russian Federation is the legal successor of the USSR, these illegal acts are committed against the interests of Russia," Markin said. He added that in accordance Article 12, part 3 of the Russian Criminal Code, foreign citizens and stateless persons not permanently residing in the Russian Federation who have committed a crime outside Russia shall be criminally responsible if their offence is against the interests of the Russian Federation.